Line spacing should be 120-145% of the point size. In word processors,
use the “Exact” line-spacing option to achieve this. The default
single-line option is too tight; the 1½-line option is too loose.

The average line length should be 45-90 characters (including spaces).

Butterick’s view on point size for pleadings, motions, and court documents:

While courts often require text to be set at 12 point—and sometimes larger—it’s
not the most comfortable size for reading. If you compare a court filing with
the average book, newspaper, or magazine, you’ll notice that the text
in the filing is larger.

When you’re not bound by court rules, don’t treat 12 point as the
minimum. Try sizes down to 10 point, including intermediate sizes like 10.5
and 11.5 point—half-point differences are meaningful at these sizes.

StyleWriter 4 graphs your style and sentence variety, and identifies
your writing habits to give an instant view of your writing. You can learn
to adjust your writing style to suit your audience and task. You can learn,
for example, the writing style of Newsweek, Time, The Economist, and Scientific
American.

StyleWriter 4 is widely used in the US federal government (for example,
the Environmental Protection Agency). It can be used by educators, students,
and professionals in various fields - business, law, social or physical
science, medicine, nursing, engineering, public relations, human resources,
journalism, accounting, etc. Download
your free 14-day trial copy now.

Yet
the legal profession is still largely unaware of how important page
layout can be. On the whole, we're still stuck in the ugly typewriting
mode: we still tend to rely on all-caps text and underlining as means of
emphasis. Professional typographers I've spoken with are bewildered by
our naiveté about the importance of not just what words appear on the
page, but how they appear.

Use typefaces that were designed for books. Both the Supreme Court and the Solicitor General use Century.

Any
face with the word “book” in its name is likely to be good for legal
work. Baskerville, Bembo, Caslon, Deepdene, Galliard, Jenson, Minion,
Palatino, Pontifex, Stone Serif, Trump Medieval, and Utopia are among
other faces designed for use in books and thus suitable for brief-length
presentations.

A plain English document reflects thoughtful design choices. The right design choices make a document easier to read and its information easier to understand. The wrong design choices can make even a well-written document fail to communicate.

Typography (do not use all caps; use serif typefaces; mixing two serif or two sans serif typefaces can look like a mistake; do not use more than two typefaces in any document, not including the bold or italic versions of a typeface.)

Persuasion includes looking good on paper — literally. Persuasion is the
backbone of a lawyer’s job. Attorneys who are able to appeal to their audience
will establish a measure of credibility, ethos, that will enhance the overall
effectiveness of the argument. Lawyers are taught to use every part of a document
as an opportunity to persuade. Textual design of the document should be approached
with the same attitude, i.e., how can it help the lawyer persuade an audience?

Prof. Robbins on point size and court rules:

her legal
There is no definitive scientific answer, however, to whether court rules should
require 12-point or 14-point font, given a page that is 8.5 inches by 11 inches.
The studies unfortunately did not test the relative legibility of font sizes
using lines of text closer to what normally appears on the standard paper size
used for most legal documents. There is some discussion that larger font sizes
such as 14-point Roman cause longer fixation pauses, which in turn slows reading.
Dr. Tinker took care to caution that there was no easy way to draw a final conclusion
as to optimal type size because other factors contribute to the equation, such
as line length and line spacing. Nevertheless, experts in the field recommend reserving 14-point and larger sizes for headings as opposed to blocks of text.
(page 122)

On line length:

The optimal line length depends on the size of the type. Unfortunately, the
standard 6.5 inches of 12-point type in common use, that is, one-inch margins
on the left and right sides of an 8.5-inch-wide page, decreases legibility by
more than 3%. Based on those studies, more modern publications claim that the
ideal line length for 12-point type should range from 2.75 to 4 inches. Modern
examples of text using narrow columns for printing include newspapers and online
legal research documents from Lexis/Nexis or Westlaw. (pages 122-123)

Prof. Robbins includes in her study the typographic requirements of various US courts.

The Supreme Court’s “Efficient Use of Paper Rule” became
effective as of January 1, 2013. Covered by the Rule are pleadings, motions,
and similar papers; all decisions, resolutions, and orders issued by courts
and by quasi-judicial bodies under the administrative supervision of the
Supreme Court; reports submitted to the courts, and transcripts of stenographic
notes. (Please read also A.M. No. 10-3-7-SC Proposed Rules on E-Filing.)

The Rule requires all pleadings and court documents to be written in:

single space with
a one-and- a-half space between paragraphs,

using an easily readable font
style of the party's choice,

of 14-size font, and

on a 13-inch by 8.5-inch
white bond paper.

The Rule also requires a left hand margin of 1.5 inches from the edge;
an upper margin of 1.2 inches from the edge; a right hand margin of 1.0
inch from the edge; and a lower margin of 1.0 inch from the edge.

The Supreme Court justifies the Rule by the following reasons:

(1) To produce 500 reams of paper, twenty trees are cut and 100,000 liters
of water are used, water that is no longer reusable because it is laden
with chemicals and is just released to the environment to poison our rivers
and seas;

2) The judicial system needs to cut the use of excessive quantities of
costly paper, save our forests, avoid landslides, and mitigate the worsening
effects of climate change that the world is experiencing;

(3) The judiciary can play a big part in saving our trees, conserving
precious water, and helping mother earth.

Save forests, use Plain English

“In 1992, the Sierra Club estimated that the average California
lawyer used a ton of paper each year, a hefty pile indeed in a state that
had about 137,000 lawyers. The environmental group urged the state’s
Judicial Council to enact a rule requiring use of recycled paper in documents
filed in the courts, a move that the group estimated would save more than
6,000 trees annually.

“Two days later, a Los Angeles Times reader penned a letter-to-the-editor
with a one-sentence solution of his own. ‘If the Sierra Club would
like to save whole forests rather than just a few thousand trees,’
he wrote, ‘I suggest that they encourage lawyers to use plain English.’”

“The letter writer was David Mellinkoff, professor emeritus at
the UCLA School of Law and the acknowledged dean of the legal profession’s
Plain English movement.”

(1) Soft copies of all Supreme Court-bound papers and their annexes must be
submitted simultaneously with the hard copy if by compact disc (CD) or within
twenty-four (24) hours from the filing of the hard copy if by e-mail. It must
be understood, however, that the paper shall be deemed to have been filed on
the date and time of filing of the hard copy and not the soft copy.

(2) The soft copies must be in PDF and individually saved, as well as individually
attached to the e-mail, if applicable. The file name of the soft copy must be
the same as the document title. Examples: Petition for Review should have a
file name "Petition for Review.pdf" Annex A should have a file name "Annex A.
pdf"

(3) Soft copies submitted by e-mail must be addressed to the appropriate docketing
office:

Case Type

Docketing Office

E-mail Address (please verify)

Judicial cases

Judicial Records Office (JRO)

efilejro@sc.judiciary.gov.ph

Administrative
complaints
against personnel of the SC and its decentralized units (e.g., OCA, PHILJA,
JBC,
MCLEO)

Office of Administrative Services, SC (OAS-SC)

efile_oas_sc@sc.judiciary.gov.ph

Administrative complaints and
matters involving the Court of
Appeals, Sandiganbayan,
Court of Tax Appeals and lower courts, its justices, judges and personnel

Documentation Division, Legal Office, OCA

efile_oca@sc.judiciary.gov.ph

Administrative
matters
involving the SC
and its
decentralized
units

Office of the Clerk of Court En Banc

efile_occeb@sc.judiciary.gov.ph

Complaints against lawyers
and other bar matters

Office of the Bar Confidant (OBC)

efile_bar@sc.jucliciary.gov.ph

(4) The above docketing offices have the primary responsibility of ensuring
that all Supreme Court-bound papers have the corresponding soft copies. They
shall also be responsible for the safekeeping and archiving of the CDs.

(5) The e-mail shall use the following format:

(6) A CD or an e-mail shall contain only electronic documents pertaining to
one case. In the same manner, all soft copies of Supreme Court-bound papers
and their annexes pertaining to the same case shall be saved in one CD or attached
to one e-mail. In case the total file size of the electronic documents exceeds
the maximum size of the CD or the maximum size allowed for uploading by the
e-mail service being used by the filer, the electronic documents may be saved
in different CDs or e-mailed in batches, but must be clearly marked and/or follow
the format prescribed above.

(7) The filer shall also attach to the CD or the e-mail a verified declaration
that the pleading and annexes submitted electronically are complete and true
copies of the printed document and annexes filed with the Supreme Court. The
declaration shall use the following format:

The declaration attached to the CD must be original, while the declaration attached to the e-mail must be in PDF.

How to create a PDF; use a scanner to turn your paper documents to PDF

The Proposed Rules on (paperless) E-Filing require lawyers to submit their pleadings to the Supreme Court in PDF format. PDF stands for “Portable Document Format.” Adobe Acrobat is the standard for creating PDFs (where you can sign your documents online) but it is expensive.

A cheaper alternative is to use a scanner to turn your paper document to PDF. Late-model
printers from HP, Brother, Epson, etc. have scanners bundled with them. (If
you only have a generic scanner, you can download free software.) Here are the steps:

[2] Scan your documents page by page; if you have voluminous documents, scanning
them will be a tedious process.

You can monitor on your computer screen the scanning progress. Be careful with choosing the scanning type. If you choose a very high resolution, your PDF file will be extremely large. (If you are using Yahoo Mail, it has a limit of 25 megabytes for attachments.)

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Color or black and white?

I took these pictures when I was a journalism teacher and yearbook adviser in Rizal High School in Pasig City, Metro Manila, Philippines from 1984 to 1995. Rizal High School was once credited in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s largest high school. Hello to all Rizalians!

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“Marriage is a covenant between a man and a woman who agree to live together as husband and wife for as long as they both live. We have chosen each other carefully and have received premarital counseling on the nature, purposes and responsibilities of marriage. We understand that a covenant marriage is for life.”